Very early in life Annie Benton learned, somehow, that it had been one of her father's pleasures, when he came home at night, to listen to her mother's piano-playing, when that excellent lady was alive; and, resolving to supply the vacant place, she studied so industriously with the poor teachers the town afforded that at fifteen she was complimented by frequent invitations to play for the glum and plain-spoken merchant. If she selected something frivolous, and played it in bad taste or time, and was not invited to play again for a long while, she understood that her music did not please him, and studied to remedy her fault. In course of time she found out what he wanted, though he never gave her advice or suggestion in reference to it; and he had amply repaid her for all the pains she had been to by saying once, after she had played for him half an hour in a dark room, while he rested on a sofa near her, that she was growing more like her mother every day.
"There were few ladies like your mother, Annie," old Thompson would say, when the girl thanked him for his appreciation. "It pleases me that you remind me of her, and if you become as good a woman as she was, it will be very remarkable, for you have had no mother, poor child, to direct you in her way."
Annie would try harder than ever, after this, to imitate the virtues of the dead woman, and bothered the Ancient Maiden a great deal to find out what she was like. She was not a drone, that much was certain; therefore the daughter was not, and tried to be as useful in the hive as she imagined her mother had been, in every way in which a worthy woman distinguishes herself.
In like manner the girl learned to read to please her father, and every day he brought home with him something he had come into possession of during the day, and which he wanted read; a book, a pamphlet, or a marked paragraph in a newspaper,—he seemed to read nothing himself except business letters; but none of these, or any mention of his affairs, ever came into his home.
Annie Benton's mother had been organist in the big stone church near The Locks, which the first residents had built in the days of their prosperity, and the girl learned from family friends that her father regularly attended both services on Sunday, to hear the music; perhaps there were certain effects possible on the great organ which were not possible on a more frivolous instrument; but it was certain that he never attended after her death until two or three years after his daughter became the organist, and after she was complimented on every hand for her voluntaries before and after the services, and for her good taste in rendering the hymns; for old Thompson was not a religious man, though he practised the principles of religion much better than many of those who made professions.
But one summer morning the girl saw her father come in, and occupy the seat he had occupied before her mother's death, and regularly after that he came early and went away late. Except to say to her once, as they walked home together, that she was growing more like her mother every day, he made no reference to the subject, though he pretended to wonder what the matter was when she threw her arms about his neck after they reached the house, and burst into tears.
One Sunday afternoon he had said to her that if she was going down to the church to practise, he would accompany her, and after that, every Sunday afternoon he was invited to go with her, although she never had practised on Sunday afternoons before. Arriving there, an old negro janitor pumped the organ, and the girl played until she thought her father was tired, when they returned home again, where he spent the remainder of the day alone; thinking, no doubt, of his property in the cemetery, and of the sad day when it became necessary to make the purchase.